She said the program has a proven methodology and has been working in the US and other places for over 35 years.

"It works and provides structure and accountability," she said.

Coburn said it keeps the program on line.

"When you feel stuck you have someone to call," she said. "You constantly staying on track and doing what you want to do and we'll help get you there."

The Main Street focus, she said, is on historic resources and unique assets.

"We don't like to rubber stamp Main Street America," she said.

"You decide what is unique about your community and you emphasize and build on that," she added.

Lamar is part of an 18 community network.

"We're growing," she said.

Advertisement

Over 2,000 communities nationwide, she said, are doing Main Street.

"You can pull on the other things they are doing and the other ideas they have," she said.

They use R&D a lot, she said, in terms of rip-off and duplicate.

Other communities may do something, she added, but the group will tweak it a bit and make it better.

"There are lots of resources and technical assistance that goes along with Main Street," Coburn said.

The average number of jobs created in 14 communities created 19 full time jobs per Main Street community.

"That's pretty big," she said.

There was also an average of seven new businesses and seven building rehabilitations.

"That's huge, she said. "You can imagine that happening in your community and it's a lot."

Statistics

Nationally, Stroh said there were 556,960 jobs created since 1980 because of the Main Street effort and 126,476 businesses and 260,011 building rehabilitations.

"That come to $65.6 billion in total reinvestment from public and private persons in Main Street communities," he said. "On the national stage that you are a part of, for every dollar invested there is a reinvestment of $26.14."

He said collecting statistics help them tell the story of why Main Street is so important.

Coburn reviewed the history of the Main Street programs.

"In the late 1970's the historic trust saw a lot of downtown buildings being left basically for dead," she said. "They were leaving for the shopping malls and they were left empty."

The thought was that they couldn't just save a building; she said they needed a business at the location.

"They really worked on this holistic approach to downtown revitalization as a way of saving all these great historic buildings," she said.

She said the National Main Street program runs the Main Street program.

"We, in Colorado, part of DOLA (Department of Local Affairs) operate the Main Street program," she said.

Many states have a coordinating agency, she said, with some of them part of the state and others are non-profit.

"You guys are one of our communities," she said.

Coburn said the communities are one who cares about downtown revitalization.

"Often that comes with a desire to revitalize downtown, business owners, local residents, different partners and different community organizations," she said.

Those residents are proud of their culture, she said, and they want it to add to the community.

"Volunteers get together and create a Main Street program," she said. "They focus on using this Main Street methodology and the hook up with us at DOLA to plug into the resources and network that we have to offer."

The Main Street approach has been refreshed by the National Main Street center, she said, are the pillars of the program are design, organization, promotion and economic vitality.

"You really have to focus on all of this stuff to comprehensively revitalize your downtown," she said.

She said the refresh part of the program takes the community vision and ask what the reality is.

"Are you an agricultural based economy, a tourism based economy and what do you want to be," she asked.

From there each community picks transformation strategies, or a big vision.

"If you say we want to be an agricultural based economy, we really think we can build with that and do it really well," she said.

She said you should projects to do in those four strategies.

"In any part of your design element, you have things that have to do with your agriculture and celebrating that and show what your history is," she said.

She added that you should also focus on quantitative and qualitative outcomes and other things that feel good.

"Overall, downtown is just more active," she said.

This story will continue in the Thursday, July 7, edition and at Lamar Ledger.com.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.